Sunday, 15 August 2010

I am working again in Spain, based at the university of Lleida, but had some time over the weekend for birding. I visited some steppe habitat at Candasnos to the NW of Lleida and also a wetland (Estany d' Ivars) to the east. This post shows some birds and dragonflies from these two places.

On a number of occasions in the past I had looked for sandgrouse at this pool, but this weekend I was rewarded with several flocks of Black-bellied coming in to drink.

Difficult capturing these bee-eaters in flight, but these are my best efforts.

Monday, 2 August 2010

This post shows a sample of 1 cy michahellis, all photographed on the beach at Roses (a small resort near Girona, Catalonia, NE Spain) on the same day. They nicely illustrate variation in the plumage and structure of michahellis at this time (25 July, 2010). In another month when wear and moult have set in, these birds will be very easy to identify; but on this date many are, in my opinion, rather difficult to seperate from some Herring and some Lesser Black-backed Gulls. The post which follows shows the same sample of birds in flight.

In some ways this bird is a little reminiscent of cachinnans (it is rather gangly and has very simply patterned greater covs)

About Me

I live close to the village of Newburgh in North-east Scotland. My local birding patch is the Ythan estuary and, especially in the winter months, Peterhead. Nowadays most of my birding time is spent gull watching.
This web site is really just a way to make my pictures useful in some way, rather than having them sitting unused on my computer. I hope you find them interesting, useful and stimulating. Most pictures are gulls, but there are some other birds dotted around - please browse through the older posts...